


someone's at the door

by kitsune13tamlin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender, Voltron: Vehicle Voltron
Genre: Black Dog, Gen, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Writing Exercise, au semi-modern day verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 05:53:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16867336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsune13tamlin/pseuds/kitsune13tamlin
Summary: the Black Dogs have always been there for Shiro.  Ever since he woke up in a burned out warehouse with no memory.  They're all he has in a world he now drifts through like smoke.  Until the day they're no longer all he has and he has to make a choice.





	someone's at the door

**Author's Note:**

> so I had an idea. Two actually. One for this story - and the second thanks to a comment about people watching writers stream. Which yes - would be super boring but it made me think about my thought process as I write and just for fun I jotted it down a bit as I went. So - this is an AU story that just kind of popped into my brain - about the Black Dog mythos and Shiro and about choosing to do your own thing in the little things and how it can change everything. Semi-modern day. There is no sequel. Call it a free-form story writing exercise.
> 
> and underneath it, I added my thoughts as I wrote. Just for fun in case anyone else likes the DVD commentary for their story. Also I didn’t edit the story once it was written the way I usually would so that it flows. Figured I’d give you the ‘rough’ draft so the commentary would fit. Let’s see how it goes.

The black dogs follow him.

He remembers the first one.  Brutus.  He’d woken after the fire and Brutus had been sitting patiently next to him.  Waiting.

There were others.  Frost had come next.  Then Darby.  The sisters, Ruth and Leah.  More.  Waking up with them sleeping in the bed next to him or trailing him down the street.  Seen in passing down alleys or on street corners.  Always the black dogs.

He knows their names and he doesn’t know how.  Some of them are silly.  Fluffy and Mr. Jingles, Mildred and Lady Luck.  Some of them are sad.  Precious, Dim Sum, Tiny Paws.  All of them are names they’ve chosen to keep for themselves, given by someone that mattered to them once upon a time and he hears each one when he sees them.  A roving pack of black dogs and he never has any trouble telling them apart.

They don’t all live with him.  In fact, only a few of them do and not always the same ones.  He gets that they’re there for him but he’s not their end goal for the most part.  Except for Black.  Black stays.  Mello and Jilty seem permanent or becoming so as well.  But Black has always stayed, from the first night it padded up to him in the rain, on the neon and oil slicked street of the city he was passing through.  There’s not a night since he hasn’t woken up with the familiar warmth and weight of Black next to him on the bed since.

Black doesn’t mind when Shiro cries into his fur or muffles a scream against his side.

People don’t see Shiro the way they once did.  Its a strange relief.  The fire changed him, he knows it.  He doesn’t feel entirely real anymore, not entirely Here and Now anymore.  There’s a part of him that he lost, somewhere in the flames and the ash and whatever hole it left behind in him, the smoke filled up instead, empty and ghosting and drifting.   Sometimes it updrafts and there are sparks, deadly and catching, in its swirls - but most of the time its just smoke inside his chest and his lungs and his heart and his stomach.  The quiet is nice.  The emptiness is nice.  Sometimes he thinks he’d like to be nothing but smoke and his right arm will fade away first then - before he feels the rest of himself starting to unwind, unspool, the last smoke of a blown out candle.

Except for the dogs.  The dogs aren’t there for smoke.  They’re there for him and on smoky days they close around him and hem him in and sit on him and demand attention.  He can’t wisp away with a hundred pounds of boney butt across his legs, pointy reverse elbows digging into his chest and ribs and a face full of doggish smelling fur.  Some days he simply lays there with his arms wrapped tight around one of them and does absolutely nothing else.  

Its enough.

He’s not dead.  At least he doesn’t feel dead.  He doesn’t run into any other ‘ghosts’, there was no funeral for him that he remembers at least.  He just woke up surrounded by ash, coughing it up in sludge, in the shell of a burned out warehouse, tatters of a heavy jacket and melted boots, a broken mask nearby - and he doesn’t remember how to get home.  Or exactly what 'home’ means.  Or used to mean.  Instead he sleeps in apartments he doesn’t pay for and eats food he doesn’t buy, following Black each night to whatever unlocked door the dog leads him to and going through it.  He likes the times they keep going back to the same apartment the most.  Sometimes for months.  Times like that let him start to figure out his favorite foods again, let him pick out favorite shows on TV, give him a send of relief when he falls into the same bed and the dogs pile on around and over him.  He thinks times like that let him start to heal from whatever it was that ripped away so much of his soul and left him wide open and scarred inside.  Slowly, during times like that the smoke inside him feels more like air, makes him feel more human and solid.

And it always takes him such a very long time after he has to leave one of those havens behind for his body to stop trying to unravel and drift away.  
Which is why he stops outside the door Black leads him to one night and says:

“No.”

That’s not his door.  Its a strange door.  It’s not the door he’s gotten used to in the past three months.  He drifts through so much of reality with only the dogs enough to always focus his attention, so much of the world doesn’t seem real and solid to him that he doesn’t always notice the little details.  But he knows the door he wants to go through, that he’s been going through these past few months and he wants to go back to it.  Black stands in front of the new strange door and huffs at him.   Shiro refuses to reach out and turn the door knob.  Instead he shakes his head and repeats:

“No.”

He’s tired of drifting.  He’s tired of fighting fading all the time.  He’s tired of having no place as his own, no real home.  He wants - 

he wants to belong.  

Black scratches at the door and whines.  Behind him Jilty and Mello mill around in the hallway.  Shiro hesitates.  He’s been following the dogs so long.  Maybe there’s a purpose to all of this, to him always uprooting and switching which bed he sleeps in each night.  The dogs have never led him wrong, have never been anything but helpful.   Saviors.  They know more about what’s going on than he does.  Maybe he should just do as they want.

But - he’d liked his last place.  It had been warm and homey.  He’d felt safe there and he’d felt welcomed there.  It had been coming home, so much more than any other place he’d stayed in since waking up from the fire.  There had been indulgent chocolate rocky road ice cream in the freezer and interesting books on the shelves and oversized, mismatched mugs in the cabinet.  He’d liked the way the pillows and sheets had smelled, the weight and texture of the heavy knit throw blanket on the couch.  The shower pressure had felt incredible against his always sore back.  

He wanted to be there.  Not here.

He shook his head again and stepped back, almost tripped over Jilty, who yelped.  But it was Black he looked at, who looked back at him.

“I’m going home,” he said and put emphasis he hadn’t meant to on the last word.  Home to the apartment with the oak tree outside its kitchen window and the linen closet with its shelf of snack foods and the little plants growing in the windowsill he’d forgotten to water this morning. Black whined and thumped a shoulder against the door in front of him but Shiro turned and went back down the stairs and out onto the street beyond it.  

None of the dogs followed him.

The feeling of being lost swept over him and he slit his eyes against it, feeling it physically as if it was a cold tide coming in fast and quickly over his head.  The smoke inside the hollow lost places of him swirled.  And yet - 

And yet…..

And yet he still felt solid.  Without his dogs, without any reason to, he still felt solid.  Curious he reached down and pressed his hands to his chest and the right one went through, already starting to look like smoke.  But the left stayed solid, pushed flesh against flesh, tanned skin against flannel plaid and the dark t-shirt under it.

“I want to go home,” he said and noticed there was dirt under his fingernails and that he was wearing some kind of class ring on his finger.

That the shoelaces of one of his work boots was untied and he bent and laced them tight again, tucking the loose edges into the boot once it was tied.  Straightened back up and felt better.

“I’m going home.”

And he whistled, something sharp and clear between his teeth, calling for his dogs and he started walking.  He wasn’t sure where he was going.  He hadn’t been paying attention when he’d been walking with the dogs earlier, letting them set the pace and chose the way.  He didn’t recognize this neighborhood or this part of the city.   He was fairly sure he was at least still in the same city.  It wouldn’t be the first time he’d drifted from one to another but he didn’t remember ever losing sight of tall buildings while he’d been out today and he hoped that meant he hadn’t simply zoned out while strolling cross-country.   Distance didn’t seem to make much difference on his walks anymore.  But he had a general guess of the way he’d come and even more a vague tugging feeling inside of him and he was determined to find his way home tonight.  For the first time his feet felt solid or maybe it was that the sidewalk under his boots felt solid.  It felt - good.

But the cold felt solid too and the longer he walked the more solid it felt.  He hunched his shoulders against it and realized he didn’t have a jacket, that he had no idea if he even owned a jacket or any clothes at all beyond what he was wearing.  He had never thought about it before, when he’d gotten dressed each morning, where the clothes came from or whether they were different than the days before.  Leather.  He had a leather jacket.  And he - wasn’t sure how he remembered it or when.  Not with him though.  Instead he tucked his hands into his jeans pockets, the smoky one and the real one and tucked his chin down.  
There was no sound of nails and swish of dog fur behind him.

His chest ached.

He whistled again - but he also didn’t stop walking.  Didn’t turn around to look.  He couldn’t keep drifting.  He couldn’t.  Suddenly the thought of it, of going smoky and lost and vague again was unbearable even though he’d been doing it for - months?  Years?  He couldn’t - couldn’t go back to that.  And the only thing that had pulled him out of it, that had been strong enough to focus him had been the dogs.

And the apartment he had started to call home.

He knew what happened with the dogs.  That he would follow them from apartment to apartment and he would fade and lose himself over and over again, start to stabilize - and then move to the next apartment and start the cycle over.

He didn’t know what would happen if he stayed in the apartment past the time the dogs thought he should.

Maybe it was something bad.  But at least it was something new and something he’d have to deal with and something that wasn’t simply doing the same thing over and over and over again.

He saw black dogs as he walked and they stopped their own journeys and looked at him as he passed.  But none of them fell in step next to him or followed behind.  For once they weren’t comforting to him.  

And yet they made him all the more determined to follow his new decision to the end.  Wherever that was.  

It was the first real decision he’d made for himself in as long as he could remember.

He didn’t know how long he walked.   The stars came out and the streetlights came on and he walked through good and bad sections of the city, past cafes and bars and shops he thought he might recognize and more that he didn’t.  The cold got deeper and started to close around his chest, making it tight to breathe.  He couldn’t have found his way back to his dogs and the new apartment if he’d tried - but he didn’t turn around to either.  He wanted to go home.

And then he turned a corner and there it was.  The closed up news stand.   He remembered that.  And there was the bodegas with the giant orange cat that always slept in the chips aisle.  His pace picked up before he even realized he was doing it.  There was the mailbox with the dented leg and the grey and white house that always reminded him of a sailing ship for some reason.  The spot the hot dog vendor usually took, closed up and empty for the night.  He was jogging now, each new familiar sight making his heart lift even higher and he was smiling without even realizing it.  The lady with the two bossy cats lived there.  The tenants that sold vague free form slogan t-shirts on their front steps on the weekends lived there.  That house was where the kegger had gone down last weekend and the police had showed up.  And there - just ahead were the familiar steps leading up the brownstone and into the building his apartment was in.  He was up them in a heartbeat, not even breathing hard and his hand pulled open the outside door, felt the familiar rush of warmer air, saw the mailboxes, that someone had a package waiting

the stairs that led upward.

And he paused.  Finally.  Turned back and looked down the street the way he’d come.  Felt the tug.  Aware, now that he’d actually found what he’d been looking for of what he might have left behind forever.  He’d made his choice.  The black dogs didn’t follow him.  He’d figured that out.   He followed them.  And if he stopped following them it was him that broke the bond.  Not them.  Wherever they’d come from, wherever they’d gone, whatever they did - they didn’t need him.  

They’d simply let him run with them while he’d been lost.

Except - 

He whistled, a long and loud and clear through his teeth as he could in the cold air.  Calling into the emptiness.  And he stood there.  In the doorway of his decision.  Straining his eyes down the nightlamp lit street.  Waiting.  Hoping.    
A car went slowly by.  Somewhere further away someone laughed and a door shut.  The cold settled into thick silence.  Time ticked by.

There were no black forms coming down the street.

Shiro waiting until he couldn’t feel his fingers anymore and then, slowly, stepped inside the building and let the door close.  Looked through its glass but saw nothing but an empty street beyond.  Swallowed around his tight throat.  
And then he turned around and climbed the stairs, listening to the soft thump of his boots on the old carpet of them.  

His heart, sunk low in him, still lifted at the familiar sight of the door home though when he saw it and he was across the hall and turning the knob in a heartbeat.  

It was locked.

He stared stupidly down at the knob in his hand and his mind stopped all together.

It had never been locked before.

He tried it again but it stayed locked, refusing to turn willingly under his hand the way he had a hundred times before.  He hadn’t - 

He hadn’t thought that it might be locked.

He hadn’t run into a single locked door since he’d woken from the fire.   He’d forgotten they existed.  And now, he’d come all this way, given up whatever it was he’d lived until now - to stand in front of a door that wouldn’t open to let him into what he’d come to think of as home.

He felt a nudge against the back of his knee and blankly looked down.  
Into Black’s eyes.

“Black?”

However lost he had felt before, it was nothing compared to the utter abandonment he felt in that moment and somehow Black showing up was the only thing that made any sense at all.  But - 

“I don’t want to go anywhere else.  I want to be here.”

Here. In front of a locked door.  With his home sealed away from him on the other side.  Black laid down at his feet, still looking up at him.  The only dog to come.  Shiro looked back down at him and didn’t know what to do.

And then the door opened.

His head whipped around and he found himself staring, wide eyed, into a dark pair of equally wide eyes.  Something dropped and landed, painfully, on one of his boots.

Someone was in his house.

“Takashi?”

A dark haired woman, looking frightened.  He blinked at her and her eyes went past him to Black, still laying next to him in the hallway.

“oh,” she said, as if nothing made sense but she understood it all the same.  And then, with more life to it:  "Oh!“

"Oh, I’m sorry.”  She was leaning down then, gathering up the bag of trash she’d dropped on his foot when he’d startled her and he was leaning down to try to help once he realized they were both allowed to move - once he realized she’d actually seen him and some flicker of old human nature or habit kicked in to try to be helpful.  Their heads bumped, not hard but hers didn’t drift through his either and they were both apologizing incongruously as if they were normal people.  She got the bag first and stepped past him to drop it down the garbage shoot he’d never noticed before.  And then she turned around and looked at him, still mystified.

“I’ve never had this happen before.  They’ve never brought one of you back after you’ve left.  I didn’t think they could.”

“They?” he thought he knew.  He knew he knew.  But how did she.

“The dogs,” she gestured to Black, lying there at his side.  "They never come back once they leave.  None of you do.“  She studied his face and he thought she looked more concerned than alarmed now.  Her lips pressed thin together for a moment and then she straightened.  "We’ll we work it out.  But - first - ”

She reached out and took his right hand in both of hers and her pale fingers didn’t go through.  Instead they clasped, firm and warm, curling with his own fingers and she smiled at him.  Stepped backward into the apartment and gave a little tug along his arm.  He smelled something that reminded him of Italian food and felt the warmth of it drift out to surround him.   Saw a delivery bag on the table next to the familiar couch and the wonderful textured throw blanket laying across the back of it.  Her voice was as warm as the feeling that rose in his chest as Black stood and moved next to him as he let her pull him into the apartment.

“I’ll get you a key tomorrow.  But for tonight, welcome back, Takashi.  

Welcome home.” 

* * *

_so the story starts like this:_

_“Man, I’ve been seeing a lot of black dogs on my dash lately.  Black dogs remind me of the Black Dog mythos.  I love the Black Dog mythos.  Graveyard and cross-road guardians.  There’s not enough stories or collected legends about it though.  I wonder if I can dig some up I haven’t read yet on the -_

The black dogs followed him…..

 _oh. oh wow.  Okay, that’s an opening line to a story.  I need to sit down and see where this goes.  Okay, so we’ve got a guy.  And the dogs.  A world of black dogs apparently.  All off doing - black dog stuff I guess.  Where’d they get names from?  Maybe they’re dead dogs and the names are the names their owners gave them in life.  And they’re off doing black dog stuff until their owners die and come for them.  Ah, he’s Shiro.  Of course he’s Shiro.  All roads lead to Rome, and Shiro, currently.  Shiro’s a wounded soul though.  Is he dead?  I’m - not sure.  This reminds me of my FFVII fic_ **[Intangible](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F16847635&t=YTYyMGJiMWNhM2E0OWMxOTNiODAyOWUxOGI2ZTA3NzdhOGFjOWRiOSxNUUxpd2JVcg%3D%3D&b=t%3APtu3tQYJ7LKr-WL36nht6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fheadspacedad.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F180791714372%2Fsomeones-at-the-door&m=1).**  Kind of 'in between’.  So we’ve got Shiro and his dogs.  I wonder if he’s going to be some kind of mythos type himself.  Maybe a Reaper or - fireman.   Okay, he’s a fireman.  That died in a fire?  Or got lost in the fire at least.  That’s what he can’t remember.  What’s the smoke though?  Him?  The fire that killed him?   Him.  The smoke is him.  Him and the fire that killed him maybe?  Either way, that’s what’s up with the hand.  And he’s got nothing to live for.  Shiro doesn’t do well without Goals.  Just the dogs.  I should give him more dogs.  Lots of dogs.  He’s going to be a Reaper that the dogs lead to people that need him, using his smoke hand for I don’t know what yet and - well, I guess him having a place to stay is important.  Kind of a nice touch.  Fill in the story setting that way I guess.  I want him to have somewhere - oh.  Oh dear.  
  
he just wants to go home….

 _oh…. that hurts.  But not 'home’ before he died.  Home - home?  Home after? Oh, okay, the old apartment.  But - what if what’s behind this new apartment door is important?  I don’t want to lose whatever might be behind this apartment door if I have him turn around and its important.  Tell me about where he wanted to be instead and we’ll see if I send him there or make him open the new door.  Oh.  Oh, wait.  Oh that does sound really nice.  And comforting.  Homey.  Somewhere soft and warm for him at the end of the day.  Okay, I like the old apartment.  That’s where he really belongs.  We’ll go there instead of opening the new door.  I like that.  He’s breaking the cycle.  That’s important.  That’s healing.  But - that’s not what the dogs want.  He’s going to have to leave the dogs.  What do the dogs want him for?  I don’t know.  It’s not a bad thing.  But its not doing anything either.  If he’s going to heal he needs to do more than follow the dogs.  Yes, the dogs aren’t bad and they’re important but right now he needs to make this decision on his own.  Needs to make this change.  Real.  It’s making him more real.   Huh, I didn’t realize he’d been Special Forces but that lace tuck into the boots is generally my writing code for SF.  Okay I like that.  SF before he became a fireman.  And now he’s - he’s become more 'himself’.  The more he pushes into the new and the unknown and what he feels he needs to do the more the world around him becomes real.  The more_ he _becomes real.   Maybe I should make him not able to find the apartment on his own but - no.  This is his journey.  I need to let him have it and give him the end of it.  He needs to find it without the dogs.  What’s the word for those corner stores in New York I read about, the ones with the cats?   Okay, there we go.  So that’s a homey touch.  I like this neighborhood. It’s almost getting too mystical though.  Add the kegger to tone it back down a little.  Don’t want to go full fairy tale boho.  Its supposed to be Real, not mythos.  But - he’s going to miss his dogs.   Black especially.  I have to show that.  That he feels better, healthier, but he’s still missing what he left behind.  The dogs weren’t bad for him.  He just needed something they couldn’t give.  Had to find it himself.  All right, up the stairs.  But - it doesn’t feel right to have him just breeze into the apartment and end it with him there.  I need something more for the story.  - ah, Lisa.  Yeah.  That does sound like her kind of place.  Okay.  i was afraid we’d left her behind the unopened door with the dogs.  No, I like this.  Maybe she’ll mistake him for the roommate she’s supposed to have moving into the apartment. Throw in a little 'my roommate is a supernatural being who has to pretend he’s a TA at the local collage campus’ kind of vibe.  There - lock the door.  Break his heart a little.  He knows where he belongs though.  It doesn’t break too much.  He just has to rethink his approach.  And yeah - Black.  Black will give up everything to stay with him.  Got to keep Black with him.  They belong together, even if its against the whole world.  There.  Let Lisa get the door.  Nice symbolism to letting him into his new life.  Now I’ll just  - wait.  Okay.  I guess not.  I guess she_ does _know what’s going on.  Kinda._ **I** _don’t know what’s going on.  But apparently she knows about the dogs at least, about the 'visitors’.  Apparently there are more of them than just Shiro over time.  I guess that makes sense.  I still don’t know what Shiro is for that matter.  Or why he needs to drift from place to place - or did.  Doesn’t now.  Now he’s real but the hand is still smoke.  He’s not Human real.  He’s just Real in whatever he is now.  But that’s enough.  That’s better.  He gets to make up his future now, instead of following whatever rules govern whatever he was.  I like that.  Fits him.  Let Lisa pull him inside though.  So he’s not alone.   So he gets people_ and _dogs_ and _home.  Shiro needs a home full of living things.  Yeah.  I like that.  I don’t know what he is but this story apparently isn’t about that.  Its about what he needs.  Welcome home.  He needs to be allowed to come home and have someone to welcome him in when he does.  A place that’s his.  A place he belongs.  A place he picked for himself.  There.  Okay.  That’s good.  That’’s wholer.  That feels right._

_I like that.”_


End file.
